LECHEROUS LIBRA...

The Eccentric Exigencies of May 2007

I salute you, my bottom types! My strange and effete creatures of the boudoir, the boutique and the badinage thereof! No doubt you missed me whilst I was on my holidays at Club De Ennui in the Sea of Forgetfulness, somewhere to the South of the Lost Continent. It was due to this merriment that I forgot to turn up for awful April, on omission for which I am completely and utterly unrepentant. However, as my credit card was quietly haemorrhaging by late last week, I was forced to depart the forgotten climes and return to work for the pittance I'm paid and the sheer joy of attempting to make your life worse than it already is.

Are you ready, my puling posterior persons? Let us first take a hindcast or rear view (eek) of the early days of May. We shall, of course, leave out Labour Day entirely. The celebration of it has always seemed akin to attending a celebration of the joys of dentistry when one just paid a fortune for a failed root canal treatment. Thus we begin with the ghastly Full Moon in evil Scorpio. You were in crisis that day as you had to decide whether to shout your idiot friends (both of them) skinny lattes with chocolate and cinnamon or buy a new rainbow coloured valance for the spare room in case guests arrived unexpectedly. Ghastly planets too tedious to name farted in aspects too hideous to recount and you were cast into deep distress, consulting with therapists, public officials, psychic readers and a depressing occultist in order to make this difficult decision. However, your friends soon became bored and went home, seeming to solve the problem, except that, on arriving at the department store to purchase the rainbow valance, you found they'd had a sale and the style you wanted had sold out. You wandered the streets in further distressing depression, discussing the shortcomings of your life and the world in general with god, challenging the almighty in a nitpicking and interrogative manner.

All of this took place just as mischievous Mercury slipped his supple battery of perversions into the sign of nitwit Gemini. But, great barking buttocks and belching bellies, there was a mighty thresh and flail of planets in the heavenly domain, bringing about a nasty turn of events. As you stepped out to cross the street, marauding Mars drove his rude bit into the nether regions of dark Pluto and a heavy vehicle making deliveries nearly drove you into the kerb, shocking you with a loud backfire, causing you to flee to shelter in the nearest doorway whereupon, instanter, a hot and sweaty hand (eek) reached out to pull you from the shelter of your vestibule to the inner sanctum of what?

Great gods alive and dead, what's happening, tiny trollops? Is this an assault upon your personage? With marauding Mars ablaze in addlepate Aries, we return to the present where the worst is possible and even fairly likely. And yet, as is so often the case with life in a benighted universe, ruled by insane gods, things are not as they seem. As the New Moon comes in cloddish Taurus, you look about you and discover you're in an arcane shop, the shelves of which are cluttered with arcane things (quite naturally) while a tiny man (the owner of the sweaty hand) stares at you with the smoulder of passion or madness in his beady eyes, a repulsively gnarled digit pointing toward a bookshelf, whereupon lie books of an apparently arcane nature.

'There lies the tome you seek,' intones the creature in a well-practiced sepulchral voice then he hurls a tiny object to the floor whereupon there is a loud report (eek), a flash of fire (aargh) and a pall of choking smoke (ugh). As ghastly planets roger the living daylights out of the Loony Nodes, you suddenly find you're back on the street, stranded on a traffic island while the shop, the little man and all signs thereof are gone.

By my sainted aunt, little bottom types! Has this all been a dream? Has some eldritch vision born of too many skinny lattes overtaken you and left you bereft if not halfway mad? Nay, as the horse god used to say, despite the many arguments one could use to support this theory. For as the great Sol Invicti clatters drunkenly into idiot Gemini, you look down to espy a book clutched between the fingers of your delicately manicured hand. You hold it up to read the legend writ upon the cover. A POKE IN THE LIPS, the visionary prophecies of Saint John the Bastard!

Egad! There's a spiritual mouthful! And yet the spookiness is not done with yet. Nay, not by a long chalk! You open the tome and scan the first sentence, always the acid test of reading material. Yikes and double yikes, my little loonies, what does it say? 'AND THEY CAME WEARING MERKINS' are the opening words, writ eons ago by St John the Bastard. Thus, you swoon, your consciousness eclipsed by phantom memories, as mischievous Mercury slips a quick one into the nether regions of dark Pluto whilst blowing a wicked kiss to the March eclipse point. You're carried back to the bittersweet joy of your merkin mission of long ago. A calm, syrupy voice of authority whispers as you lie prone in a trance. Your body tingles as you gyrate and thrust in the parts where a merkin would normally be worn.

Great gods alive and dead, what is happening, tiny turnips? Was there really an arcane shop? And how much does an arcane cost anyway? More to the point, who was St John the Bastard and what mystic wisdom does he have of merkins? Click here in jaded June for the next exciting instalment of A POKE IN THE LIPS NOW, the truth about St John the Bastard. In the meantime, hail and farewell, my bumptious bottom types!